Fundamentalist Christianity

[Dondi]

Welcome to CR, wethirst!

I didn't know this thread existed until now. It's been buried for two years until resureected by wethirst. But I do want to put my thoughts into the matter.

I grew up in a fundamental Baptist church. I was taught the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God. Sin is evil, hell is hot, and Jesus is the only way to God. Basically, if God said it, then it's settled. So I was "saved" at the age of 13 way back in 1976.

But since I've been around the block a few times, I've modified my views a bit. I still attend a fundy Baptist church, though. I still believe that i was saved back in 1976, however, my thinking about just what that really means has broadened greatly over the years.

I believe God's light shines through the filter of the Bible. I recognize that it is not a perfect document. it was written by men who believed in God and were inspired by God. So mistakes will be made. I don't meddle with little inconsistancies such as whose geneology is in Luke and Matthew or what king reigned when and how long. I chalk these up to scribal mistakes of men who were trying to perserve something sacred, but were still fallable. God's light shines in the scriptures opaquely. We see through the glass darkly.

I'm a bit less fundamental now, and a little more tolerant to other faiths. I see salvation beyond the act of getting saved and toward the goal that God really wants for His children, to be conformed to His image. While I believe salvation is important, i think there is somewhat too much emphasis on salvation and not on the point of salvation. The point of salvation is not to save someone out of hell and into heaven. The point of salvation is to bring people back into a loving relationship with God and our neighbor.

I have a different view of sin. Because sin is directly related to those relationship. I explained this in another forum in a discussion about divine healing:


In the beginning, God made Adam from the dust of the earth and Eve from Adam's rib. Before the fall, they were perfect and enjoyed perfect communion with God. When they sinned, they fell from that perfect communion with God.
As a result, sickness and death entered into man. Was this caused by sin? Well, in a way, yes.

See, the problem is not in the sin itself, but what that sin has done to our relationship with God. Since God is the giver of Life, the sin has enter to keep that Life from sustaining man.

What sin does is disrupt our communion with God. We cannot approach the holy of holies, because our sin will destroy us, because God operates in the perfect.

All sin really does is make love imperfect. It clouds our sense of rightness toward the Lord. Therefore we cannot receive God's love and sustaining power properly. Nor can we love God and our neighbor properly.

That is precisely why God sent His Son, Jesus. To restore God's Life back into. By taking away our sins, we can receive the Holy Spirit which will regenerate out spirit and souls and, eventually, resurrect our bodies on the last day.

Our soul and spirit are reborn, but our bodies are not redeemed yet. Why? Because all of creation is still under the curse. There is still sin in the world and as long as sin lingers, so will sickness and death. When God makes the New Heaven and New Earth and we are raised to life at the Resurrection, the perfect physical state will be restored. The corruptable will become incorruptable. Until that time, we have to live in a fallen state. Thus sickness and death reigns.

This doesn't prevent us from enjoying God's Life now, in our spirit and soul. We can commune with the Father through the sinless Son who lives in us. On occasion, God's healing power may be manifest, but any healing we experience here is still only temporary.

So now my focus in bringing others to Christ is not to necessarily to instill the fear of hell and the hope of heaven in someone. Because this is all for nought if they aren't willing to have a relationship with God:

"And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." - John 17:3

Instead, I would see people open up to a relationship with the Source of Life, for heaven without God is not heaven.

 

[Quahom1]

I'm curious. What is a "fundementalist"? Since Catholicism is one of the first forms of faith in Christianity...would that be considered fundementalist? (Roman/Orthodox). What is called "Protestant" can't be "fundementalist" since by its very nature "protests" the original faith, which was the basic beginning. Think about it folks. Christianity is not based on the Bible. The Bible didn't exist, at the time of fundementals being established in Christianity. The Bible is a guide that followed the new faith, for future believers and posterity.

It is also an "History" that was finally committed to written word. Just imagine what Christianity my look like today, without the written word (hell, look at it today with the written word).

Luther, the founder of Protestantism did not protest the Latin Vulgate, nor the Christian faith of the times. He protested the "politics" of the Vatican. So called "Fundementalists" didn't appear until after the 16th century. How can a realitively new sect be Fundemental in faith? They can't.

In reality, your "fundementalists" are the Coptics, the Synods, the Etheopians, the Roman and Orthodox and Egyptian Catholics, even the "Gnostics". Why? They are the FIRST Churches. They are the base structure of the Church of Christ. Christianity was FOUNDED upon these churches.

There are your fundementalists. They are from the "beginning".

my thoughts

v/r

Q

 

[Abogado del Diablo]

I'm curious. What is a "fundementalist"? Since Catholicism is one of the first forms of faith in Christianity...would that be considered fundementalist? (Roman/Orthodox). What is called "Protestant" can't be "fundementalist" since by its very nature "protests" the original faith, which was the basic beginning. Think about it folks. Christianity is not based on the Bible. The Bible didn't exist, at the time of fundementals being established in Christianity. The Bible is a guide that followed the new faith, for future believers and posterity.

I suppose you could define it that way. Protestants (Anglicans excluded), of course, take the position that the "faith" wandered away from its origins with the Catholic Church by the time of the Reformation and sought to purge those doctrines and particularly those practices the protesters found to be inconsistent with what they believe the faith originally was and should be. Importantly, both sides lay claim to more accurately represent the original tradition of Christianity.

While the historical record reveals precious little about the first century of the church, we do have evidence (from the letters of Paul) that there were significant divisions from quite early on. We also have solid evidence that, by the mid-second century, the early "church" was not unified. There were Ebionites, Nazarenes, Marcionites, Valentinians, Docests, Montanists and probably many others, with "Gnostics" scattered throughout many of them. Of course, there was no discreet identifiable group of early Christians who called themselves "Gnostics." That is a modern term and, depending on who is using it, often is not limited to Christianity.

Of course, had any of these other Christianities prevailed over the others in the early days of the "Christianizing" of the Roman Empire, we'd refer to that version as "Catholic," which literally just means "general" or "universal." Instead, one group (rather late to table based on the historical evidence it seems) began to emerge in the second half of the second century with the idea that there could properly be only one set of approved dogmas that were allowed to be considered "Christian." Many of the books that became the foundation of the New Testament make their first appearance in the historical record during this time, including the four "canonical" gospels and the Book of Acts. The champions of this "proto-orthodoxy" were Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons whose works are primarily from the 180s and early 190s C.E., and Tertullian, a Carthaginian definer of "heresies," and perhaps the first to use the word "Trinity" (trinitas) as part of the Christian lexicon. The latter, ironically, switched to Montanism later in life and was condmned as a heretic by the Church ("Live by the sword . . ." and all that I guess).

The heart of their strategy in creating this Catholic church was to emphasize "apostolic succession" as the defining measure of the objective truth of one's personal beliefs. They effectively institutionalized the "argument by appeal to authority" as the central device of Christian discourse. And it's been one fight after another for what is "catholic" ever since. I don't think you could call it a "war," but one of the great battles within the emerging Catholic Church in the early Christianizing of Rome was between "Trinitarians" and "Arians" over the specific issue of whether the Church ought to believe in the Trinity as an objectively true human statement about the nature of God. And at one point, the Arians had significant political control within the Roman church through their influence on the Imperial family. The famous early Christian propogandist Eusebius was very close to Constantine and his sister, but was temporarily banished along with Arius after the Council of Nicea voted to denounce Arianism as a heresy in 325.

To me, the similarity in almost all these sects is the method by which they define themselves and their faith. I see very little practical difference between a political group that insists God is a "Trinity" and a political group that insists Jesus was a "creature." They both claim to use the force of tradition as an basis for their authority to assert their power over the ideas of people (as do the Protestants). They all believe in the literal, objective unquestionable truth of the meanings they impart to their words and dogmas. They all believe that these dogmas are the creation of God itself and cannot be doubted.

In that sense, they are all "fundamentalist" in more modern sense of the word. While it's true that "fundamentalism" as a modern term was originally associated with certain Protestant revivalists in the early 20th Century, it has taken on a broader meaning in our day as a reference to a particular form of political methodology that uses religious authority as its base. That's why we can speak of "Islamic fundamentalism" and nobody seems to get confused about why Muslims would want to trace their origins back to early Christianity or a 1920's Protestant movement. The common modern meaning is a reference to the political method of defining common identity by right-thinking, and excluding dissenters as heretics, infidels or the "unsaved" (depending on which fundamentalism you are talking about). In its modern sense, fundamentalism has some common characteristics:

(1) belief in the inerrancy of the sect's scriptures
(2) belief in the inerrancy of the sect's tradition (including traditions about how the sect's scriptures were chosen and/or formulated)
(3) an "us v. them" approach to others - a sort of besieged alienation where followers define themselves by their strict adherence to the sect's dogmas, and marginalize dissent by distinguishing its truth based on deviations (sometimes major and sometimes minor) from the "truth" of the sect's approved scriptures and tradition.

I would contend that a fair understanding of "fundamentalism" as a method requires us to also look beyond those ideologically driven sects that overtly use the language of recognized religion, and that we should consider as fundamentalism those offspring of nationalism and modernity that use the same method, including German and Italian fascism, Eugenics, and many regional manifestations of Communism. Perhaps we should include even modern "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" in the sense hard-line idealogues are using these terms to define identity today.

 

[Quahom1]

Hmmm, Fundimental Liberalism...

 

[Abogado del Diablo]

Hmmm, Fundimental Liberalism...

Yeah . . . it's weird huh? Is there some evidence that political movements calling themselves "liberal" have started using the methods of fundamentalism?

 

[Quahom1]

Yeah . . . it's weird huh? Is there some evidence that political movements calling themselves "liberal" have started using the methods of fundamentalism?

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of "damn frightening to even consider"...

 

[lunamoth]

The problem, as I see it, is that in this life we are inescapably mired in dualism. Can't be helped: is part and parcel of beings that think in binary. This or that. We perhaps sense that things are off, that we are working too hard, that something better is there just outside our ... reach (oh no! I sound like Taj! ). We see through the glass darkly, in glimpses and glimmers; we know it when we see it (Love) but can't grasp it and write it down because that kills it. Fundamentalism arises, in my simple opinion, when we try to hold so tightly onto that truth, and as we insist that our truth is the Only Truth, we put everything else outside. We cling (out of fear) when really what we need to do is let go (because love drives out fear), at least loosen up a bit. We need to go easy on one another.

It's a delicate balance between finding things to share, building relationships and sharing the experience, but then not letting those commonalities become lines in the sand, that which can't be crossed without creating 'other.' This seems so obvious I'm beginner to wonder why I am typing at all.

My personal answer to all this, how to bridge the divide, is to focus on relationship first, and all of these other questions (things that are purely theological doctrine, and things that amount to 'practical religion,' ) all need to follow 'am I caring for my neighbor?' aka the commandment to Love. The question, to me, is not what happened in the early days of Christianity, but what are we doing right now.

sorry for the rambling,
luna

 

[Quahom1]

The problem, as I see it, is that in this life we are inescapably mired in dualism. Can't be helped: is part and parcel of beings that think in binary. This or that. We perhaps sense that things are off, that we are working too hard, that something better is there just outside our ... reach (oh no! I sound like Taj! ). We see through the glass darkly, in glimpses and glimmers; we know it when we see it (Love) but can't grasp it and write it down because that kills it. Fundamentalism arises, in my simple opinion, when we try to hold so tightly onto that truth, and as we insist that our truth is the Only Truth, we put everything else outside. We cling (out of fear) when really what we need to do is let go (because love drives out fear), at least loosen up a bit. We need to go easy on one another.

It's a delicate balance between finding things to share, building relationships and sharing the experience, but then not letting those commonalities become lines in the sand, that which can't be crossed without creating 'other.' This seems so obvious I'm beginner to wonder why I am typing at all.

My personal answer to all this, how to bridge the divide, is to focus on relationship first, and all of these other questions (things that are purely theological doctrine, and things that amount to 'practical religion,' ) all need to follow 'am I caring for my neighbor?' aka the commandment to Love. The question, to me, is not what happened in the early days of Christianity, but what are we doing right now.

sorry for the rambling,
luna

What you are stating, is what has been asked of mankind since the beginning. Unfortunately the select few of mankind with power hasn't answered in the positive, and the rest are too busy surviving to really sit and consider it. So, we hide in our little holes without digging deeper.

my thoughts

v/r

Q

 

[lunamoth]

What you are stating, is what has been asked of mankind since the beginning. Unfortunately the select few of mankind with power hasn't answered in the positive, and the rest are too busy surviving to really sit and consider it. So, we hide in our little holes without digging deeper.

my thoughts

v/r

Q

Hi Q, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. We do struggle and struggle to survive, it seems, and I admit it's a luxury that I can sit here and even contmeplate such things as my survival is more or less 'secure.' You know the story about the feasts in heaven and hell? In hell all sit before a feast and all seems normal except that everyone has long long arms and no elbows. They look a the food all day long but starve constantly because they can't get the food to their mouths. In heaven the feast is the same. The long arms and no elbows, also the same. But everyone is feasting and happy--because they feed each other.

OK, perhaps it's a simple platitude. I'm sure I come off as quite naive, and I probably am. The world's problems are not simple and easy; it's all grey rather than black and white. I can't do anything about the war in the middle east. I can make good choices about the things that come into my small sphere of influence. That alone is hard enough at times.

 

[Quahom1]

Hi Q, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. We do struggle and struggle to survive, it seems, and I admit it's a luxury that I can sit here and even contmeplate such things as my survival is more or less 'secure.' You know the story about the feasts in heaven and hell? In hell all sit before a feast and all seems normal except that everyone has long long arms and no elbows. They look a the food all day long but starve constantly because they can't get the food to their mouths. In heaven the feast is the same. The long arms and no elbows, also the same. But everyone is feasting and happy--because they feed each other.

OK, perhaps it's a simple platitude. I'm sure I come off as quite naive, and I probably am. The world's problems are not simple and easy; it's all grey rather than black and white. I can't do anything about the war in the middle east. I can make good choices about the things that come into my small sphere of influence. That alone is hard enough at times.

No, actually that was quite astute of you. The difference between heaven and hell, is attitude, and thinking of others verses self...

And the difference between fundamentalism and the truth, is the same...

v/r

Q

 

[Quahom1]

Fundamentalism is not the truth. It is a "walled garden" approach to life. Jesus NEVER surrounded himself with like minded people. He never hid behind His faith, or His beliefs, nor did He pass judgement (like so many of us are so quick to do).

But there is a difference between Fundamentalism and liberalism, or progressivism. Fundamental Christianity does not sway from the "fact" that Jesus is Lord and God of us all, hence we are subject to His rules, and accountable. The same can not be said of the other two, because in the other two, Man takes precedence over everything (including God).

So, we are left with the original beginnings of the Christian faith...as balanced in this approach to life. The truth is Jesus rules, and we must be more open minded to the diversity of life, because He was and is...that doesn't mean we give cart blanche to others to "do as they wish regardless of what consequences others may suffer".

THAT is the problem I have with the two extremes...they are both out of balance, and everyone else suffers because of it.

my thoughts

v/r

Q

 

[Abogado del Diablo]

THAT is the problem I have with the two extremes...they are both out of balance, and everyone else suffers because of it.

my thoughts

v/r

Q

What do you perceive as the "two extremes"?

 

[Quahom1]

What do you perceive as the "two extremes"?

Now that would be inviting a war of words, now wouldn't it (in this public forum)?

v/r

Q

 

[seattlegal]

Yeah . . . it's weird huh? Is there some evidence that political movements calling themselves "liberal" have started using the methods of fundamentalism?

**Warning: Tongue in cheek response**

I can describe some symptoms: "political correctness overdone to the point of intolerence," and "newspeak," where (intolerable) words are removed over time, with a net result of the limitation of ideas and words to express them, to name a couple.
The "Conservative/Liberal Fundamentalist" principles:

1. Thou Shalt not Offend, except if it happens to be one of the close-minded "Liberal/Conservative Fundamentalists," because they are too dumb to recognize something as offensive. {btw, did I mention that the same principle will apply both ways if you simply reverse the "liberal" and "conservative" labels?}
2. Hot and Cold are offensive--lukewarmness is the only inoffensive way to go. {Even if it leads to intellectual and spiritual inertia. It is better to be inert than to be offended.}
3. Diversity can only be achieved inoffensively through homogenization. {talk about double speak! }

 

[flowperson]

Seattle:

I believe you forgot #4.

Mediocrity is the ultimate goal of the human race. In this future utopia nobody will be offended, no one will need to search for answers that will ultimately conflict with another's beliefs, there will be lots of places to shop, and above all everyone's life will become "comfortably numb" and boring.

flow....

 

[Quahom1]

Seattle:

I believe you forgot #4.

Mediocrity is the ultimate goal of the human race. In this future utopia nobody will be offended, no one will need to search for answers that will ultimately conflict with another's beliefs, there will be lots of places to shop, and above all everyone's life will become "comfortably numb" and boring.

flow....

"What a beautiful world this will be...what a beautiful place to be free...90 minutes from New York to Paris, undersea by rail. Can't wait for my "spandex" jacket, one for everyone....ooooohhhhhh"

 

[kenod]

The idea that Truth is somehow malleable really worries me. I may not have the whole Truth (yeah, even I can be wrong!!) but I sure believe that there is only one Truth. The Bible is either the infallible Word of God or it is not. One of the defining hallmarks of Christian fundamentalists is that we believe the former.

Dialogue that embraces the inerrancy of Scripture, still produces different points of view. It would be nice to say that we all can be right, but obviously that is not possible. But is it possible for one person to be totally right … probably not.

We should be tolerant and respectful of others’ opinions, but I have sometimes asked myself this question: “What would I be prepared to die for?”. Fortunately, I probably won’t be required to do so, although right now around the world, people are being persecuted and killed for their beliefs.

We do not have to apologise for believing that we are right, when we honestly believe we are. It may not sit too well with the “let’s all just love each other” mentality, but let's not get so wishy-washy that we are afraid to say “you are wrong” ... or so precious that we get offended when someone tells us he/she thinks we are wrong.

Robust debate is healthy, and requires conviction. The harm stems from using our beliefs to inflict pain and suffering on others. But at times even this may not be completely avoidable ... social/moral issues are often influenced by one's religious beliefs, and are regarded as causing suffering by those who are on the losing side ... eg, creating embryos for stem cell research.

The love that Jesus practised encompassed forgiveness and patience, but it did not include the "many paths to the Truth" rhetoric we often hear today.

 

[taijasi]

Oh, my bad, then when the man spoke this, he must have been on crack ...

And other sheep I have which are not of this fold,
Them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice
And there shall be one fold and one shepherd ...
​

Thanks for the correction.

taijasi

Truth is One, paths are many

 

[Abogado del Diablo]

Kenod, I wrote something here, but decided this forum wasn't the right place for it. If you (or anyone else following this discussion) is interested, I've posted some ideas and questions stimulated by your last post into the "comparative studies" forum as a new topic.

 

[Jeannot]

Kenod,

"The love that Jesus practised encompassed forgiveness and patience, but it did not include the "many paths to the Truth" rhetoric we often hear today."
________________

But how could it be otherwise? There are almost as many varieties of views as there are people.

So let's say that Truth is one, and is not malleable. Okay. But we are malleable. So how do we move toward the Truth? It seems to me that the greatest barrier to the Truth is those who assume they are already in possession of it. No one is. But we are all called to move toward the Truth. And the journey is never-ending; the mistake is to settle down and stop moving.